


Revenge

by goldarrow



Series: Timeline!verse [4]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M, bad things happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 01:42:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Helen exacts revenge for the destruction of her laboratory.





	Revenge

**Author's Note:**

> Ditzy, Blade, Finn and Lyle belong to fredbassett, who kindly lends them out.  
Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures, not me. I will return them when I’m done, I promise.  
A/N: This one is nasty. Be warned.

I had really, really been hoping I’d never see Helen Cutter again. But there wasn’t ever much chance of that; she could give any bad penny a run for its money in the showing up stakes. 

After Helen ‘rescued’ me from the cage room three months ago, dumped me in an alternate timeline and scarpered, then started experimenting with actually merging timelines together, she turned into someone so dangerous that Sir James Lester, the head of the Anomaly Research Group, managed to talk his friends at the Home Office into adding her onto their wanted list. Which meant that she would have a target on her back every time she jumped into this timeline. 

And that seemed to have added some extra fuel to the fire of her anger with me for being the one who suggested that the Special Forces blow up her laboratory. I had no idea how she found out who had destroyed her compound, but one thing I did know: 'anger' just might be a slight understatement. Incandescent fury would perhaps be more accurate. And that fury had led directly to me sitting at the back of a deep cave that was most likely somewhere in the Cretaceous, chained to a pillar of rock and rather cross about my current situation, since it was my own carelessness that had put me here.

Having always been alone, it was a new experience for me to be living with, as well as working alongside my Special Forces lover, Captain Tom Ryan. It had taken a little while to get used to it, but I had learned to love the life I now possessed. Every morning we’d go for a run side by side, then we’d shower and grab some breakfast, and finally we’d head to the Home Office together. That is, every morning except for the first Thursday of each month when Ryan would head off early to Hereford for briefings and I’d run alone. Having got used to matching paces with the extremely fit soldier, I found myself starting to mentally drift whenever I ran alone, lost in the music from my headphones. And that turned out to be my downfall. 

I was just turning the last corner on my way home when someone stepped out in front of me so suddenly that I stumbled. For one horror-stricken moment I thought I was going to do a staggering half-pass into the middle of the road. Just as I was catching my balance again, a car pulled up beside me, one of its back doors opened, and the man who had stepped in front of me shoved me inside, cracking my head against the door on the way. Within half a second, the man sitting in the back seat held a very smelly cloth over my nose and mouth and I went out like a light, with only a moment to vaguely wonder why I was being kidnapped by triplets.

xXx

It turned out they weren’t triplets; they were three of Helen’s clones. I woke up in the cave with one standing over me, one on guard at the entrance, and one shadowing Helen, who was coming across the open space toward me with an undoubtedly deliberate irritating smirk on her face. For some reason, she looked older in the flickering light of the torches. I tried to remember if she'd looked like this when she rescued me a few months ago, but I couldn't; I'd been in pretty rocky shape at the time and it was all a bit of a blur. 

“Welcome back, lover,” she said, as she stood looking down at me.

I had to resist the urge to beat the back of my head against the stone, since it wouldn’t affect her in the slightest and would only give me a headache. Deciding that the best defence would be to ignore any provocations, I simply closed my eyes, sighed, and replied, “What do you want this time, Helen?”

Opening my eyes the tiniest slit, I could just make out the expression on her face. It looked like the one she wore whenever one of her students displeased her; the one that signalled hell was about to be let loose all over some poor unfortunate kid. When there was no verbal response to my question, I wrestled my embryonic grin down to a slight smile, opened my eyes halfway, and stared as insolently as I could right into her furious eyes. And they were furious, though she was hiding it as well as she could. I think she’d forgotten over the years that I once knew her as well as she knew me. And after all this time, and with the level of confidence I’d achieved recently, I wasn’t going to let her twist me up again.

The thing that truly frightened me most about this situation was the possibility that she could muck up the timelines again before I could get back to where I wanted to be: home to my new timeline, to my lover and my friends. Suddenly concerned that she might be able to read that in my expression, I blocked the thought and smirked at her. “Nothing to say, Helen?”

Her eyes narrowed and I could see her reassessing the situation. There was no fear in her expression, no worry at all that I could see. Helen was the ultimate predator, completely sure of her own power over anyone and anything she met. And when that kind of surety meets someone who isn't cowed, then God help the man who stands up to it because her self-image will require that she take him down.

So I then did some of my own reassessing. As temporarily satisfying as it might be to let her know that she had no influence over me any more, it could also prove extremely dangerous considering my current slightly restricted position. I decided to back off a little, so I made myself blink quickly a couple of times, knowing she would read that as a sign of weakness. 

Her expression eased and she smiled at me. I'd rather trade grins with a velociraptor. And based on a few of the faint creature calls I'd been hearing echoes of from outside, that might not be out of the realm of possibility. We were definitely in the Cretaceous. Shit. That meant my chances of escaping were even more problematic. Unarmed, alone, with no anomaly detector and no supplies, in the Cretaceous? I would stand as much chance of making it home as a gnat in a whirlwind. 

I added in a slight swallow, carefully. I had to tread a fine line in working on her. Too much and she'd see through the act, not enough and she would take it as a challenge. It looked as if I got it right.

“I have plenty to say, Stephen.” 

The superior tone in her voice grated on my nerves, and I dropped my eyes to hide my own anger. “Why am I here?” I asked, hoping she would count the slight shake in my words as fear rather than fury.

She ran her fingers through my hair and down along my jaw line. I shivered and she chuckled. “Don't you want to be with me? I used to be the centre of your world.”

“Yes, you were,” I replied quietly. "Until you used that devotion to hurt me and my friend, your husband.”

Her fingers tightened on my jaw, curling under to press slightly on the nerves. When I hissed at the sharp ache, she released me; punishment received and acknowledged. 

“I'm sorry you were hurt then, Stephen,” she said, stroking my neck. “Nick had rejected me again, and I really did want you to come with me. You should have known that Nick would reject you, too. He has no forgiveness in him. He's a hard man.”

By the time she finished speaking, I was shaking again, this time in sudden fear. The Nick in my current life had forgiven me years ago. Could it be that she really didn't know very much about the timeline she'd dumped me into? If she didn't know, I had to make sure she never would or she'd find a way to screw it up for me somehow. I didn't have to disguise the tears in my eyes this time.

“Why am I here?” I asked again, turning my face slightly away.

This time, still stroking me, she deigned to answer. “Many reasons. I wanted to give you one last chance to join me.” Both her voice and her hand hardened. “But you are being rather foolish.” She grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me in for a quick, vicious kiss, then whispered in my ear, “You put my research back years with your little raid on my laboratory.”

I couldn't stand it any more. I pulled back enough to look at her. “Helen, why in the name of all that's holy would you want to merge timelines? What possible reason could you have for destroying so many lives?”

Her face was a study in confusion. She was so stunned by the question that even her default setting of sexual provocation was wiped out. “I destroy nothing,” she said. “You of all people should know that. Ryan, who was dead in your timeline, is still alive here; and you, who were dead in this timeline, are now alive here again.”

I closed my eyes in relief, hoping she wouldn't catch on to her slip. I wanted to dance. I was still in the same timeline! I still had a chance to get back home. I opened my eyes again, trying to display confusion of my own, rather than the elation I was feeling. “But what happens if a merge takes one who was alive and wipes him?”

She shrugged, obviously unconcerned. “He'll still be alive in another timeline somewhere.”

That took my breath away. The colossal ego it would take to make that kind of statement made me wonder if she was still human after her years of wandering. I stared at her, appalled. I couldn't force a word past my tight throat, and I couldn't bear her touching me for one more second. I jerked away from her, making her truly look at me for the first time since she'd started talking. 

Eyes narrow, she started examining me closely, the predator fully engaged now. “I see. I thought there might be a chance. But you are just as idealistic and even more stupid than my Stephen was. You could have had everything. Now, you'll have nothing.”

Knowing it was of no use, I tried one last time anyway. “Helen, please stop this! We have to work together. We have to contain the anomalies, not play games with them!”

She laughed. “Contain them? Stephen, there are worlds upon worlds upon worlds to discover. Places where history has taken the strangest of turns, and places where the scientific advances are beyond your comprehension.” She stroked me again and I didn't bother to hide my revulsion this time. 

“There's no reasoning with you, is there,” I said tiredly, not even making it a question. Then I replayed her prior words in my mind. Her Stephen? Was this not even the Helen I'd known all those years ago? My head started hurting and I almost missed her next words.

“Reason? There is no reason in any of this; haven’t you realised that yet? The anomalies are getting worse. More timelines are crossing each other all the time. There’s no way to tell when or where they’ll connect with each other. But sooner or later, Stephen, some more advanced timeline’s scientists are going to discover how to invade other timelines. And there will be chaos.”

I stared at her. I must have looked pretty gormless, because she laughed.

“Stephen, what would happen if there are multiple timelines, all being controlled by one group of people?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I replied. And that was the absolute truth. She’d dumped me off of her train of thought about two stations ago.

“Exactly,” she said triumphantly. “No one knows. And waiting to find out will destroy everything. I’ve seen the future, and mankind is gone! I had to find a way to merge timelines, use that knowledge to close down and overlay the timelines that might have the capability of invading others. That’s what my research was about. That’s what you destroyed.”

I bit my lip, thinking fast. Which future had she seen? Had mankind been wiped from all timelines? Jesus. And had she actually done it herself with her experiments? I was way out of my depth on this one, with absolutely no idea how to cope with her. Then I had a brainwave. “Helen. With so many timelines, isn’t there at least one where your compound still exists?” 

She shook her head. “No. I’ve searched. There are no timelines with any life existing in them anywhere near that one.”

That thought started my shivers up again to the point I could feel something like ants crawling up and down my spine. If that laboratory had machines capable of merging timelines and they had been used, were the dead timelines caused by the people who set up that place? Oh, fuck. 

“Helen, was it abandoned when you found it? Was all that equipment already there?” I know my voice was urgent, although I almost didn’t want to know the answers.

Her eyes narrowed. I could see the conflict in her as to whether she should reply or not. Then she shrugged. “Yes. It took a while, but I worked out what it was used for.”

Now I really did want to beat my head against the stone. If I could see, but she couldn’t, that the laboratory being abandoned with dead timelines around it pointed to some pretty serious destruction resulting from the use of that equipment, then only madness could be motivating her. Whether or not she was the Helen I’d known and loved for a time was irrelevant now. All other considerations had to take second place to stopping her. If she managed to somehow recreate the compound, or find another, then there would be destruction on a scale I couldn’t even imagine.

“Helen, if that place had dead timelines around it, then maybe it was abandoned for a reason. Maybe it didn’t work.” I paused, looking into her eyes, searching for humanity. “Or maybe it worked too well.”

“Of course it did,” she replied evenly. “They were fools. They worked out how to merge two timelines together without destroying theirs, but then they decided to take shortcuts by merging more than two timelines at the same time. They tried it on five lines without enough safeguards and there ended up being no master timeline. They wiped all the higher life forms out of their own timeline, leaving only the equipment. The other timelines were completely devastated, scoured down to bare rock. I was working on a way to control it, to keep that timeline as the master no matter how many lines were merged.” At that point she seemed to remember her anger. “That’s what you interrupted.”

This time I gulped in earnest. The look in her eyes was colder than an industrial freezer. “Helen -” 

She didn’t give me a chance to continue, overriding my words with a voice as icy and dead as her eyes. “And since you won’t pay me back by joining me, then you’ll pay in another manner.” She stood and turned to her clones, dismissing me from her attention without a qualm. “Your reward for a job well done. Enjoy him, then stake him out to feed any creatures that are hungry.”

“You want him dead before we dump him?” Number One asked.

“It doesn’t matter.” Her gaze returned to me for a moment and then she smiled slowly. “On second thought, perhaps he should be kept alive. That will give him more time to regret his stupidity.” With that statement, she walked out of the cave, leaving me to the not-so-tender mercies of her clones.

xXx

I really tried my hardest not to scream.

It wasn’t too bad at first. They unhooked me from the stone pillar but kept my hands cuffed behind me. I’ve played plenty of football and even a little bit of rugby in my life, so being beaten up wasn’t the end of the world. I was more pissed off that I couldn’t fight back than anything else. They kept taking turns; two holding me and the third using his fists. I finally managed to stop that phase by ducking at the perfect time, just once: I think it might have been Number One who actually landed the direct punch on the stone pillar. If the roar he let out was any indication, he broke a couple of bones in his hand. I wanted to laugh, but taking a deep enough breath to do so was off the table at the time. I might have broken his hand, but he’d certainly broken a couple of my ribs. 

I thought he was going to defy Helen and kill me right then. His good hand wrapped around my throat and squeezed, and my vision started to grey out around the edges. I tried to pull away, but by that time I was pressed flat against the stone. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, and my knees turned to jelly. When I started to slide down the pillar, he let go and kicked me. I already knew what getting smacked in the balls felt like, from those same football games. But this kick added a new dimension: a steel-toed boot. Getting kicked by that definitely caused what is commonly known as ‘exquisite agony’. I almost passed out. I know if I’d had anything in my stomach it would have been decorating both the floor of the cave and his boots. I retched and then my throat closed up and I stopped breathing for long enough to make me seriously concerned about my oxygen levels. I couldn’t even hug my hurt; my arms were still pulled behind my back.

When I finally started breathing again and the world came back into focus, all three of them were laughing. They pulled me to my feet, yanked my trousers and pants down around my ankles, and shoved me across a convenient rock. My knees smacked the floor and I felt the broken ends of my ribs grate against each other as I landed across the boulder, and I almost lost consciousness again. Within a minute, I was wishing fervently that I could pass out. In fact, I’m not sure I wasn’t begging them to knock me out, kill me, just please God stop this. 

Ryan and I had played a little rough occasionally, but it was always understood that either one of us could halt things at any time. There was no stopping this. Two of them stood on either side of me, holding my arms and pressing me flat against the rock. The third one knelt on my calves, which hurt like fucking hell, then spread my cheeks and started to shove his cock into me. I was completely dry and tight from terror, but it made no difference to him. When he couldn’t get his cock into me unaided, he jammed both thumbs into my arsehole and wrenched my sphincter open as hard as he could.

I think that was the first time I screamed. The second time was when he rammed his cock into the hole he’d made and started pumping. It felt like scorching hot sandpaper was being raked along the sensitive tissue. It burned, it pulled, and after a few thrusts it escalated to the tactile equivalent of a cheese-grater being shoved into me. The third time I screamed was when the tightness eased up. Something inside had torn. A velociraptor strike would have hurt less. And I base that statement on experience, thank you very much. 

It only took him a few more thrusts before he came inside me with a grunt. When he pulled out, I could feel the mixed semen and blood dripping down my legs. Round about then was when I started to check out. I think I felt the second one enter me; I’m not sure, though. My entire body was going numb. I wasn’t dying, just retreating. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Just go away, let them do whatever they wanted, and maybe come back later. If there was going to be a later.

I never felt the third one at all. I woke up only when the bright sunlight hit my eyes as they dragged me outside. I didn’t try to help them. I couldn’t even think about moving; my body didn’t seem to be working at all. They dragged me about a hundred metres from the cave and dropped me onto my face in the dirt.

Watching Helen saunter over was rather eerie. It reminded me of the tunnels when I was delirious from the arthropleurid venom. She was drifting in and out of focus just like then. When she came near, I closed my eyes. Trying to focus on her hurt my head too much. I felt her working the lock on my handcuffs, and my arms fell to my sides, totally useless. I couldn’t have moved even if I’d had any inclination to try. A boot under my shoulder turned me over onto my back, but I kept my eyes closed. The sun was bright, and my head was thumping while the rest of my body felt numb. I knew I was going to die, and I really didn’t want her face to be the last thing I saw. I’d rather go out with the memory of the rock I’d been lying over in my mind’s eye.

It turned out that I had no choice. As two of her clones stretched my arms and legs out wide and tied my wrists and ankles to the stakes they’d driven into the ground, Helen grabbed my hair and used it to shake my head.

“Open your eyes, Stephen,” she ordered. “Now.”

Debating whether or not to obey, I asked dully, “Why should I? There’s nothing I want to see.”

“I think there is,” she replied. “Look to your left.”

It filtered into my agonizingly slow mind that the only way to make her shut up, the only way to finally end this, would be to just go ahead and do what she said. So, I squinted my eyes against the sun and turned my head slowly and painfully to the left as Helen stepped away.

“Bitch.” That was the only word I could force out of my thickening throat. My wrist was tied tightly to the stake with a strip of rawhide, and the stake was immovable. And about three centimetres out of reach of the farthest stretch of my hand, a knife was stuck into the ground. It might as well have been a continent away. All I could do was stare at it as Helen motioned for her clones to leave me. 

“Goodbye, Stephen,” she said, in the same superior tone she’d used on greeting me. “When they find your remains, I think your friends will think twice about crossing me again.”

I watched her walk away out of the corner of my eye. Most of my attention was held by the knife. The reflection of the sunlight on the blade was almost hypnotic. I couldn’t look away. My entire being became concentrated on that one bright reflective spot. I think I was losing consciousness, because the rest of the world was disappearing. 

xXx

Suddenly, I was jerked back to reality by the sound of gunshots, lots of gunshots, a couple of deep yells and one high, mad scream. I looked up when a shadow fell over me and pulled my attention away from the bright steel. 

“Oh, God.” 

The voice was familiar. I blinked a couple of times to bring the face into focus, and my memory obligingly supplied the name. I smiled. At least, I think I did. “Ryan.”

“Stay still.” I’d never heard his voice shake like that.

“’S okay. Don’t think I can move, anyway.” I thought I should let him know that.

“I swear that fucking bitch is dead. I don’t care if she’s fucking wounded. I’m going to fucking kill her myself as soon as they get her back here.” In stark contrast to his rough voice, Ryan's hands were very gentle as he cut the straps binding me. 

I wondered vaguely if I ought to be embarrassed. After all, I was lying on the ground naked but for an open shirt, and I was probably still leaking blood and semen into the dirt. Then I remembered something.

“Ryan,” I started.

“Don’t talk. Just hang on. Please.” For some reason, he was sounding a bit desperate.

I couldn’t work out why he sounded like that. But it didn’t matter. I had to tell him.

“That’s not our Helen. Not yours, and not mine.” I hoped that he could understand me. I know I was slurring my words rather badly; I could hear it.

“What?” Ryan sounded confused.

Damn. I thought I’d made sense. I guess not. “Multiple timelines. Multiple Helens. This one is barking mad.”

“Oh, fuck,” he groaned as Ditzy and Finn arrived with a stretcher and some news.

“Helen’s dead,” Finn reported quietly as Ditzy rapidly checked my injuries and then started to pack the wounds. “She pulled a gun on Blade, and he took her out. Sorry, boss.”

Ryan held my hand as they lifted me onto the stretcher. “Don’t worry about it; this was a crazy woman from some other timeline.”

“Crap.” That was Lyle. No one else could make that word sound quite so filthy. “I was really hoping we’d got rid of the bitch for good.”

“No such luck,” Ryan answered. “But right now, I don’t care. We got what we came for.” He leaned forward and kissed me gently. “Let’s go home.”

I smiled. Those were the nicest words I’d heard all day.

End


End file.
